This invention relates to photographic easels and particularly to easels capable of exposing photographic papers and the like for the production of photographic prints and enlargements of various types.
Photographic easels are normally used for exposing photographic papers and the like to various images. If a photographic easel is to be used for custom enlargements, in which the sizes of the resulting prints vary, and in which each print is to be surrounded by a border, it is customary to use an easel with movable thin opaque blades that form the borders at the edges of the prints. For such custom work, accuracy and adaptability are more important than the speed with which papers may be placed and removed from the easel. On the other hand, for rapid mass production of prints having uniform sizes and borders, speed and ease of loading and removal of the paper from the easel becomes essential. Different types of easels are usually used for these various purposes.
Recently, it has become customary to utilize all of the photographic material on a photographic paper by exposing the paper to produce borderless prints. A larger image results from the same size paper. While it would appear that no easel would be necessary for such borderless prints, photographic papers tend to curl and thus some means are necessary to hold the paper without interfering with the light emerging from an enlarger which focuses an image upon the paper. Usually, transparent plates are unsuitable for this purpose because of the losses incurred by inter-surface reflections. On the other hand, such transparent plates are quite suitable for exposing photographic papers in the production of contact prints.
Because of the various demands, different types of easels are used for these purposes. Examples of such easels appear in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,848,923 and 3,273,452. However, each of these easels only performs one of the aforementioned desired functions.
Moreover, most easels are composed of a base and a facility for engaging the paper. Normally, the engagement device must be raised to insert and remove the paper. Often, it is necessary to hold the engagement means in a raised position. This usually requires setting a comparatively complex holder such as that shown in U.S. Pat. No. 2,848,923.
An object of the invention is to avoid the aforementioned difficulties.
Another object of the invention is to improve photographic easels.